Migration as a Risk Sharing Channel

ON 25 AND 26 MARCH, THE MACROECONOMIC ASPECTS OF MIGRATION WILL BE DISCUSSED IN A CONFERENCE ORGANIZED IN COLLABORATION WITH VOLKSWAGEN FOUNDATION

In a currency union, policymakers cannot adjust exchange rates in response to asymmetric shocks that hit some countries more than others. Labor mobility can, thus, turn out to play a risk sharing function, dissipating shocks across countries, and serving as a pressure-easing mechanism.
 
The role of migration in risk sharing in the Euro area is the subject of Migration and the Macroeconomy, a two-day conference to be hosted on 25 and 26 March by IGIER in collaboration with Volkswagen Foundation as a part of the Risk Sharing in the Euro Area project, which involves scholars from Aristoteles University Thessaloniki, Bocconi University, and University of Tübingen.
 
“The conference will cover geographic mobility from a macroeconomic perspective,” says Simon Goerlach, Assistant Professor at Bocconi Department of Economics and organizer of the conference.
 
Linda Tesar, Professor at the University of Michigan and a former Senior Economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the U.S., and Moritz Kuhn, Professor at the University of Bonn, will deliver keynote presentations.
 
Among the topics discussed by the scholars there is also a refinement of the conditions that allow labor mobility to absorb asymmetric shocks. Riccardo Franceschin (Sabanci University), a graduate of Bocconi, will present a paper that distinguishes high- and low-skilled workers. If models consider workers as homogeneous, the argument goes, the benefits of labor mobility are clear – but if we think that high-skill workers are more mobile than low-kill ones, a detrimental brain-drain effect emerges.
 
The conference will be the occasion to meet Marta Prato (University of Chicago), who has been announced to join Bocconi as an Assistant Professor. She will present a paper titled “The Origins of Regional Specialization.”
 

by Fabio Todesco